Still sleep deprived, apparently.

Note: I fell asleep while composing this yesterday, so I'm back dating it for midnight +1 minute.

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I tried to come up with a list of surf injuries for this season, but I had trouble compiling the list... possibly because I suffered a level 1 concussion on Wednesday when I dinged my board with my skull.

I know that there's a chip on my right central incisor (getting it fixed Wednesday morning)... there's a hard, longish bump on the front of my right tibialis anterior (a "finjury")... there's still a sore spot on the left side of my jaw... there is a collection of big bruises on the insides of both arms... there's a big bruise on the inside of my left thigh... my left ear has taken to ringing and my right ear just plain hurts...

One thing that I've noticed though... is that all the pain is coming from getting whacked and not from over-exertion... this can be interpreted as progress... I've been surfing so much that my arms and back don't get sore now unless they get whacked... progress! If I could figure out which waves to go for and when so as to avoid getting whacked... that would be even more progress.

I loaded my 11' NSP into the car today... and went and got a thermal rash guard thing to keep warm... both my winter wetsuits are super holey... and the shop hasn't received their shipment of winter suits yet. I don't shop around... so I have to stay warm and wait. I didn't go out for a surf tonight though... I checked a few beaches, but the onshore wind was pretty strong... besides which, I didn't have Bluepath... so I went for a climb.

It had been over a week since I've climbed... I was the only one there... so the climbing gym dude belayed me... and gave me step by step instructions on two very familiar routes. His instructions made those routes so difficult that I couldn't do them... in fact, it made them so difficult (and me so tired) that even when he told me to do my own thing, I kept getting lost and stuck, like I would on difficult routes that I had never been able to do. I had no more strength in my hand grip by the end of the session. So I guess I have to keep going... and often... until like Beowulf, my hand grip has the strength of 30 men.

During my short trip to Victoria earlier this month, I noticed that hoodies are not that common an article of clothing-- very few people, in fact, wear hoodies. I used to know this... but having sartorially acclimatized myself to Tofino, I had forgotten that hoodies are, in North America, commonly considered the outerwear of choice for skaters, surfers, and criminals, rather than something owned and worn by a majority of the population, such as, let us say, a sweater. Ever since I remembered this detail about the hoodie-free world in which I used to live, I have been mentally transposing hoodie wearers into various other environments, with great comic effect. Picture a big mechanical arm coming out of the sky, picking up five people in hoodies from downtown Tofino, and dropping them at the intersection of Pender and Thurlow... the mechanical arm notwithstanding, this would turn heads-- half the hoodies would be on age and income inappropriate people. I am performing these and other mental exercises in order to not get too lost in the far, far away planet of Tofino. Always ask... "how would this look at the corner of Pender and Thurlow?"... normal here isn't normal elsewhere... it's good to try and remember.